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Old Apr 29 2008, 12:49 AM
J. Lee Graham J. Lee Graham is offline

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True. Though there is effective practice, and useless practice, which I'm finding as I slowly bring back what little dexterity I worked up as a teenager.

My story is similar to the others, except that I never had much of a foundation to begin with. I had two years of piano lessons from age 8 to 10, then because my parents divorced I had no access to a piano until I was 13; from there I started all over on my own and taught myself everything I know, because my mother couldn't give me any more lessons (not looking for sympathy...that's just my story). I can play quite musically, but I never developed any discipline for hard work on etudes, nor have I ever known what etudes I should be practicing or HOW to practice properly.

Hence it took me a full year to learn a moderately difficult Haydn sonata, and I'm still not 100% there technically. Just what does one practice to learn such a thing in the way of etudes? I figured since Czerny studied with Beethoven, who in turn studied with Haydn (though not keyboard...Beethoven could have taught Haydn a thing or two there), maybe he was a good place to start. But I must have been practicing it incorrectly, because I got very little out of it hammering away at Czerny but tendonitis. It's frustrating.

I suppose I need a teacher to show me what I may be doing wrong and give me some guidance and crack a whip over me.
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